The Electoral College
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Last yearÆs presidential election educated the American public on the role the Electoral College plays in electing our nationÆs President. For better or for worse, in the 2000 presidential election the candidate that received a majority of the popular vote lost the presidency to the candidate that barely won the Electoral College. Since this contested election, there has been much hue and cry for the abolition of the electoral college. However, doing away with the Electoral College would make the majority of the nationÆs states inconsequential in deciding the outcome of the presidential election. The issue of Electoral College reform is as complicated as the Electoral College itself, and unfortunately there is no quick fix that will solve the problem. Although most Americans would agree that some kind of electoral reform is necessary, there is absolutely no clear consensus on what should be done to improve the way our presidents are elected. This paper will try to prove that the best solution to this pressing issue is to make the Electoral College mirror the popular vote more accurately. This could be done without really costly alterations in our electoral policies by making states award mixed slates of electors based on the outcome of the popular vote within each state. Before a discussion on how to change the Electoral College can begin, one must first examine how the electoral college came into being and what its function in our electoral system is. The Electo
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5% of the states (Holmes, 21). This problem is compounded by the fact that there is no federal law that states that electors must vote according to the electoral outcome in their state. Twenty-one states do require that their electors must vote for the candidate they were chosen for, although in some cases the punishment for straying can be as mild as a misdemeanor citation and a fine of one-thousand dollars (Michener, 7). Given this lack of accountability, it is remarkable that there have only been eight ôfaithless electorsö since the systemÆs creation (Pawelek, 17). Indeed, the right of an elector to cast his/her vote for whomever they wish rather than the candidate that won in their state is even protected by the Supreme Court, in the 1952 decision in Roy v. Blair (Katz, p. 3). Last, but certainly not least, is the problem that lies in the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College. A candidate that wins California by a one percent majority receives every single one of the statesÆ 54 electors. This phenomenon is called the ôunit rule provision": people who vote for the losing candidate within a state have no vote nationally because all the stateÆs votes go to the winning candidate. This would seem to contradict ou
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Approximate Word count = 3472
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)
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